Race as Seen Through the Racial Formation Perspective

Becoming a citizen of American society is the process of learning to see race – that is, to ascribe social meanings and qualities to otherwise meaningless biological features. And in turn, race consciousness figures centrally in the building of a collective body of knowledge without which we could not make sense of the world around us – a body of knowledge that Omi and Winant call 'racial common sense'. That describes the associations we make between individual characteristics, preferences, behaviors, and attitudes and a particular physical appearance or perceived group membership